Honourable Healers: Pioneering Women Doctors, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Constance Stone

Abstract

134 BOOK REVIEWS lawful certain forms of exclusion from migration. Thus, for example, in 1882 the New Zealand Imbecile Passengers Act contained specific provisions for controlling the entry of any person ‘lunatic, idiotic, deaf, dumb, blind or infirm’ who might later depend on charitable or government public institutions (p. 166). Such individuals were not banned from New Zealand, but a bond was required if they were to gain entry. Later, in Australia, the Immigration (Restriction) Act of 1901, sought to restrict a range of ‘unwanted’ immigrants, including those with mental illnesses. Insanity, Identity and Empire draws on and extends Coleborne’s previously published works about institutional confinement. In future work she plans to assess whether the social distinctions inscribed in official asylum records affected patients’ treatment and discharge, analyses that will also reflect the mobility of medical knowledge about insanity. For those with an interest in the colonial management of mental illness this is something to anticipate. ANN WESTMORE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Merrilyn Murnane. Honourable Healers: Pioneering Women Doctors, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Constance Stone (North Melbourne, Victoria: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2015). ISBN 9781925333053 (HB). B&W and colour illustrations, B&W and colour portraits, facsimiles. xvi + 225pp. Retired Melbourne paediatrician Dr Merrilyn MurnaneAM, has in one inspiring narrative brought together the lives of nineteenth-century woman doctors Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Sophia Jex-Blake and Constance Stone. In story-like fashion, she demonstrates how each strove against strident opposition in different times and places to pioneer the right of women to gain medical qualifications and enter the medical profession. Relying mainly on secondary sources, Murnane has written a book of great accessibility. She begins with a chapter on the early history of women in medicine from ancient times to the nineteenth century, and then dedicates individual chapters to these four pioneer woman doctors, chronicling their lives from birth to death, and portraying their common struggles and diverse achievements in Great Britain, the United States, and Australia. They were women of action whose Health & History ● 18/2 ● 2016 135 effects on the medical profession, medical education, and womenonly outpatient and inpatient services were revolutionary. Murnane reveals the significant connections between the careers of these pioneers, and how their trailblazing work influenced the life paths of aspiring women doctors who followed. Particularly affecting is her assessment of the sometimes-overlooked contribution of Dr Sophia Jex-Blake, and her remarkable endurance in the face of decades of formidable opposition. Murnane’s chapter on Constance Stone has special resonance for Australian readers. Not only was Stone ‘The first Australian lady doctor’, but she instigated the establishment of Australia’s first professional association of medical women, the Victorian Medical Women’s Society. In 1896 she also helped found the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women (later the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital), the first women’s hospital in Victoria operated for women by women. The author suitably devotes chapters six and seven to this Melbourne institution, which within fifty years had become the largest hospital run by women in the British Commonwealth. Murnane worked here first as a paediatric registrar then consultant , and claims its establishment was ‘the most important event in the history of medical women in Australia’ (p. 146). She writes with pride about this hospital’s development and survival over two world wars and beyond, emphasising its vital role as an employer of women medical graduates, able to entice almost every Melbourne woman doctor at some point in their professional life. Influenced by Blackwell, Garrett Anderson, and Stone, these women continued to endorse the very real need for women and children to be treated by female doctors, in dedicated women-only hospitals. Indeed, Murnane dedicates her book to one of this hospital’s former leading lights, the late neonatologist Dame Kate Campbell, whom she names as her ‘inspiration and mentor’. In Chapter Seven, distinguished black and white portrait photographs support brief biographical pieces about the hospital’s eleven founding woman doctors. These capture employment records unheard of now, exemplified by the unwavering dedication of the 52-year and 54-year service of Janet Lindsay Greig and Lilian Alexander respectively. Twenty-nine colour, sepia, and black and white plates adorn the pages following this chapter, and display...